Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

I went to the bathroom when I got home and examined the cut. The swelling seemed down. Maybe. Maybe the light in the bathroom just wasn’t strong enough for me to see clearly. I cleaned it with soap and water, patted it dry, applied hand sanitizer, and then rebandaged my finger. I also took my regular medication, and then a few minutes later an oblong white pill I’d been told to use when panicky.

I let the pill melt on my tongue into a vague sweetness and waited for it to kick in. I felt certain something was going to kill me, and of course I was right: Something is going to kill you, someday, and you can’t know if this is the day.

After a while, my head got heavy, and I sat down on the couch in front of the TV. I didn’t really have the energy to turn it on, so I just stared at the blank screen.

The oblong pill made me feel exceptionally groggy, but only from the bridge of my nose up. My body felt like its standard self, broken and insufficient in the usual ways, but my brain felt sloppy and exhausted, like the noodle legs of a runner post-marathon. Mom came home and plopped down next to me. “Long day,” she said. “I don’t mind students, Aza. It’s the parents that make my job hard.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“How was your day?”

“Okay,” I said. “I don’t have a fever, do I?”

She pressed the back of her hand to my forehead. “I don’t think so. Do you feel sick?”

“Just tired, I think.” Mom turned on the TV, and I told her I was going to lie down and do some homework.

—

I read my history textbook for a while, but my consciousness felt like a camera with a dirty lens, so I decided to text Davis.

Me: Hi.

Him: Hi.

Me: How are you?

Him: Pretty good, you?

Me: Pretty good.

Him: Let’s continue this awkward silence in person.

Me: When?

Him: There is a meteor shower Thursday night. Should be a good one if it’s not cloudy.

Me: Sounds great. See you then. I have to go my mom is here.

She had, in fact, peeked her head in through the door. “What’s up?” I asked.

“Want to make dinner together?”

“I need to read.”

She came in, sat down on the edge of my bed, and said, “You feeling scared?”

“Kinda.”

“Of what?”

“It’s not like that. The sentence doesn’t have, like, an object. I’m just scared.”

“I don’t know what to say, Aza. I see the pain on your face and I want to take it from you.”

I hated hurting her. I hated making her feel helpless. I hated it. She was running her fingers through my hair. “You’re all right,” she said. “You’re all right. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” I felt myself stiffen a little as she kept playing with my hair. “Maybe you just need a good night’s sleep,” she said at last—the same lie I’d fed to Noah.

TWELVE

THE MORNING OF THE METEOR SHOWER, I arrived at school with Harold and discovered a bright orange Volkswagen Beetle parked in my usual spot. As I pulled in next to the car, I saw that Daisy was in the driver’s seat. I rolled down my window and said, “Didn’t Josephine the banker tell us not to make any purchases for six months?”

“I know, I know,” she said. “But I talked the car sales dude down to eighty-four hundred dollars from ten thousand, so in a way I actually saved money. You know what the color’s called?” She snapped. “Snap orange! Because it’s snappy.”

“Don’t waste the money, okay?”

“Don’t worry, Holmesy. This car is only going to appreciate in value. Liam is a future collector’s item. I’ve named him Liam, by the way.” I smiled—it was an inside joke that literally no one else would get.

As we walked across the parking lot, Daisy handed me a thick book, Fiske Guide to Colleges. “I also picked this up, but it turns out I don’t need it because I’m definitely going to IU. I always knew that college was expensive, but some of these places cost almost a hundred grand per year. What do they do there? Are the classes on yachts? Do you get to live in a castle and get served by house-elves? Even Rich Me can’t afford fancy college.”

Certainly not if you’re buying cars, I wanted to say, but instead I asked her about the Pickett disappearance. “You ever figure out what ‘the jogger’s mouth’ was?”

“Holmesy,” she said. “We got the reward. It’s over.”

“Right, I know,” I said, and before I could say anything else, she spotted Mychal across the parking lot and ran off to hug him.

—

All morning, I lost myself in Daisy’s college book. Every now and again, a bell would sound, and I’d move to a different room, sitting at a different desk, and then I’d go back to reading the college guide, holding it on my lap under the desk. I’d never really thought about going to college anywhere but Indiana University or Purdue—my mom had gone to Indiana and my dad to Purdue—and they were both cheap compared with going to school out of state.

But reading through the hundreds of colleges in this book, which were rated on everything from academics to cafeteria quality, I couldn’t help but imagine myself at some small college somewhere on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere with two-hundred-year-old buildings. I read about one school where you could use the same library study carrel that Alice Walker had. Admittedly, fifty thousand would hardly make a dent in the tuition, but maybe I could get a scholarship. My grades were good, and I was a competent standardized test taker.